Some twenty years before seat belts became mandatory in Michigan, I was a college freshman hitchhiking home with a friend from Ann Arbor for a holiday weekend.
A woman picked us up, and my friend climbed into the back seat while I sat down in the front next to a small boy who was perched between the driver and me.
Maybe 30 minutes later, I was nodding off when the car suddenly started screeching to a halt. Instinctively, I threw my left arm in front of the boy as his body was hurtling forward, and slammed him back onto the seat. I lurched forward myself but stopped before hitting the windshield.
An instant later, we crashed into the car ahead of us. Another car slammed into us from behind.
The car was badly damaged but still drivable. The woman and her son were pretty shaken up and crying, so we drove them to the nearest hospital. My friend and I assured the doctors we were fine.
Once they had been treated and released for whiplash, my friend and I said goodbye and resumed our hitchhiking along the freeway headed north.
"Thank you," the woman said to me as we parted. "I think you saved my son's life."
I didn't tell my parents about the incident initially, because I knew it would just make them anxious about my hitchhiking habit. I kept lots of things secret from them in those days. But a couple days later my neck started to hurt badly enough I couldn't turn my head and my mother took me to a doctor. He said that I, too, had suffered a whiplash.
***
A notable thing about the English language is that we can deploy a word into different contexts for descriptive purposes and achieve similar connotations.
The word "whiplash" this week is being used to describe the emotional reaction many of us are having to the pandemic's stubborn refusal to go away -- so much so that it is in danger of wrecking what was a very nice recovery period we were enjoying until it crashed just a few days ago.
Joe Pinsker employed this usage in his essay in The Atlantic entitled, "Yes, the Pandemic Is Bad Again --Masks are reappearing and return-to-office plans have been postponed. Welcome to Delta’s whiplash."
"(T)he near future feels uncertain again," he writes. "Just a few months ago, I felt like the rest of the year was easier to visualize. Now a light fog seems to have descended, similar to the denser one that obscured the future for the first year of the pandemic. I’m back to feeling a mild sense of the “horizonlessness”—the lack of a firm reference point in the future—that was pervasive last year."
Pinsker also describes the only way we can get out of this emotional mess:
"(H)igher vaccine uptake...would reduce infections as well as the likelihood that another variant arises. It could serve an invaluable emotional purpose too, by ameliorating the whiplash, horizonlessness, and other less quantifiable woes that add to the stress of living through a pandemic. It could help lift the psychological fog we have sadly become acquainted with, and have no wishes to return to again."
***
Very sad news that the Taliban has overrun Taloqan, the city where I taught as a Peace Corps teacher 50 year ago.
***
THE HEADLINES:
* Pandemic set off deadly rise in speeding that hasn’t stopped (AP)
* Companies Are Scrapping Their Plans for Fall --The fast-spreading Delta variant has managers revamping schedules, with bosses delaying office reopenings and canceling events. (WSJ)
* Yes, the Pandemic Is Bad Again --Masks are reappearing and return-to-office plans have been postponed. Welcome to Delta’s whiplash. (Atlantic)
-- [Thanks to my buddy Bruce Koon for alerting me to Pinsker's piece.] --
* The delta variant arrived at just the right time to break our spirits (WP)
* If America doesn't vaccinate a large enough number of its population to help crush this outbreak, the surge could become the country's worst yet, some experts warn. (CNN)
* The Kindergarten Exodus -- As the pandemic took hold, more than 1 million children did not enroll in local schools. Many of them were the most vulnerable: 5-year-olds in low-income neighborhoods. (NYT)
* Weary U.S. businesses confront new round of mask mandates (AP)
* Marjorie Taylor Greene fans cheered low vaccination rate in Alabama, which tossed 65,000 doses (WP)
* Once lagging, Europe catches up to the U.S. in vaccinations (AP)
* What to Do With Our Covid Rage (NYT)
* Virus surge sends ripples of alarm through Democrats (WP)
* To shake hands or not? An age-old human gesture now in limbo (AP)
* U.S. teachers' union shifts stance to back vaccine mandate as COVID surges (Reuters)
* I treat pediatric covid patients. What I’m seeing in our hospital scares me. (WP)
* Fauci hopeful COVID vaccines get full OK by FDA within weeks (AP)
* Does the U.S. Want the Lab-Leak Truth? (Opinion/WSJ)
* Wildfire Forces Hundreds to Escape Greek Island by Sea (Reuters, AP)
* ‘Lynchings in Mississippi never stopped’-- Since 2000, there have been at least eight suspected lynchings of Black men and teenagers in Mississippi, according to court records and police reports. (WP)
* For G.O.P., Infrastructure Bill Is a Chance to Inch Away From Trump -- The former president’s efforts to bring down the bipartisan deal fell mostly on deaf ears among Republicans, signaling his waning influence on Capitol Hill. Can it last? (NYT)
* A champion of women in public, Cuomo is accused of harassing them in private -- The gaping disparity between Andrew Cuomo’s publicly declared commitment to stamping out abuse and harassment and his alleged private behavior has emerged as one of the most staggering aspects of a scandal engulfing the three-term Democratic New York governor. (WP)
* How Cuomo Took Advantage of #MeToo -- When a movement swept the world, the New York governor cast himself as its champion. But even as he signed protections and surrounded himself with feminists, he was committing fresh offenses, according to a new report. (NYT)
* Taliban overrun northern Afghan cities of Kunduz, Sar-e Pul, Taloqan (AP)
* Zoo airlifts frogs for wild release -- California's Oakland Zoo recently completed their 18th release of zoo-bred frogs to the wild. (Reuters)
* Prehistoric cave paintings in Spain show Neanderthals were artists (Reuters)
"Open Season"
Song by High Highs
Get on your knees
And I thought you can leave it all in your mind in it
All in your mind in it
Crawl in the backseat old friend
It is really all in your mind in it
All in your mind
You look
So tired of living like a kite, kite, kite, kite
Look at all the trees in the light
They are growing all in your mind in it
All in your mind in it
Look at all the leaves in the fire
They are burning all in your mind in it
All in your mind
You look
So tired of living like a kite, kite, kite, kite
Get on your knees
And I thought you can leave it all in your mind in it
All in your mind in it
-30-
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